{"id":2520,"date":"2018-06-05T12:24:27","date_gmt":"2018-06-05T19:24:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/?p=2520"},"modified":"2019-03-07T10:30:29","modified_gmt":"2019-03-07T18:30:29","slug":"valencia-boondoggles-and-better-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/valencia-boondoggles-and-better-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Valencia \u2013 Boondoggles and Better Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

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We were going to go to the southern beach, El Saler, but the weather was so-so and it\u2019s a long bike ride, about 50 km round trip.\u00a0 If we had had our own bikes, no prob, piece o\u2019 cake but while the bikes we have here are actually pretty good, they are a little uncomfortable, especially the seats. So, we gave the beach a miss and instead biked as far as the sci-fi set again.\u00a0 This time though we parked it and walked around the huge complex.\u00a0 It\u2019s very futuristic and the edifices look almost like modern urban sculptures as opposed to functional buildings.\u00a0 Maybe that was the point?\u00a0 Dunno, but there is a lot of space and not a lot of substance.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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The science center is a great place for kids, dinosaur exhibits, space exhibits, low gravity and G-force demos, and an exhibit about Mars.\u00a0 There\u2019s even a giant Foucault\u2019s Pendulum at one end.\u00a0 All this explains the little hordsters, but there isn\u2019t much here to keep an adult entertained.\u00a0 The iMax theater is, well a round dome iMax, encased by a 23rd<\/span><\/sup> century glass and steel bubble.\u00a0 Lot\u2019s of air space.\u00a0 It\u2019s going to take centuries to generate enough revenue to pay for all of this.\u00a0 Don\u2019t get me wrong, it\u2019s a very attractive and unique area, but we think they could be doing so much more with it.\u00a0 Maybe turn it into a Disney park?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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A couple of the other \u2018projects\u2019 that money got spent on are the F1 racing circuit the city built in 2008 that snakes through the streets.\u00a0 Maybe they hoped to become the next Monaco.\u00a0 It was used for a couple of years to host the European Grand Prix but since 2013 has been dropped from the F1 circuit.\u00a0 The other is the \u2018new\u2019 harbor which we rode past on our previous beach trek.\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t realized it at the time, but the harbor was built in 2007 to host the Americas Cup.\u00a0 There were names over some of the large buildings like team New Zealand and a few others and I\u2019m sure it was very impressive when all the expensive racing yachts were in port.\u00a0 When we went by though, it looked empty and a little derelict.\u00a0 According to a Telegraph article written back in 2012, the cost of this puppy was 2.4 billion Euros.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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So, what about the better times?\u00a0 The day before we hopped the metro again and went for a walk around one of the \u2018hipster\u2019 areas, Russafa.\u00a0 We were told it\u2019s quite trendy and has a lively atmosphere, music, a great market, and some good places to eat.\u00a0 Maybe it does but it was Monday.\u00a0 It\u2019s been 3 months and we still haven\u2019t figured this out!\u00a0 It was a nice stroll anyway and we stopped in at a building called Lonja de la Seda, or Silk Exchange.\u00a0 This huge gothic style civil building was constructed between 1482 and 1548 at the height of Valencian prosperity as a shrine to commerce and became the main exchange for the silk trade.\u00a0 There is a Latin inscription written in gold letters in a band running along all four walls extolling the union of ethics and economy: <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Inclita domus sum annis aedi\ufb01cata quindecim. Gustate et videte concives quoniam bona est negotiatio, quae non agit dolum in lingua, quae jurat proximo et non de\ufb01cit, quae pecuniam non dedit ad usuram eius. Mercator sic agens divitiis redundabit, et tandem vita fructur aeterna <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I am a famous house which was built in \ufb01fteen years. Fellow-citizens, try, and see how good is trade whose words are without fraudulent intent, that swears to its neighbour and does not fail him, that does not give up its money in usury. The merchant who lives in this way will abound in riches and in the end will enjoy eternal life.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The silk exchange is a world heritage site now and the \u2018Hall of Columns\u2019 with its vaulted ceilings and spiral columns that flare out at the top are quite spectacular. \u00a0It reminds us a little of Gaudi\u2019s work.\u00a0 Definitely worth seeing and the price was right.\u00a0 For us old geezers, a whopping <\/span>\u20ac<\/span>1.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This is a really nice city, and we think it has a lot going for it.\u00a0 Hopefully it\u2019s not another 500 years before the prosperous times are back.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Lonja de la Seda, (Silk Exchange)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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We were going to go to the southern beach, El Saler, but the weather was so-so and it\u2019s a long bike ride, about 50 km round trip.\u00a0 If we had had our own bikes, no prob, piece o\u2019 cake but while the bikes we have here are actually pretty good, they are a little uncomfortable, especially the seats. So, we gave the beach a miss and instead biked as far as the sci-fi set again.\u00a0 This time though we parked it and walked around the huge complex.\u00a0 It\u2019s very futuristic and the edifices look almost like modern urban sculptures as opposed to functional buildings.\u00a0 Maybe that was the point?\u00a0 Dunno,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2583,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2520"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2520"}],"version-history":[{"count":36,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4338,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2520\/revisions\/4338"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}